Since at least 1981, Major League Baseball had designated the Baltimore Orioles television territory to extend from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Boston Red Sox baseball coverage began in 1984 on the New England Sports Network, airing mostly road games on the newly formed pay cable channel.
Former Sox second baseman Kent Derdivanis served as the play-by-play announcer and Mike Andrews provided color commentary.
NESN periodically sent guest color commentators to the booth, with the likes of Rico Petrocelli, Bill Monbouquette, and Dick Radatz.
In 2006, it became the first network to broadcast all its Major League Baseball team's games in high definition, available to cable providers throughout New England, DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse (in CT) and Verizon FIOS (in MA).
With the end of local pro sports coverage, FSN Chicago became mostly a feeder channel of the national network's entire schedule, some minor local and semi-pro teams, Midwestern outdoors programs, and sports rights and games from other college conferences of little interest to Chicago area viewers.
It operated as a separate business venture, it can be compared to the New York Yankees' YES Network, as both were started primarily to broadcast each team's games.
The Guardians' regional broadcasts were taken over by MLB Local Media in 2025 after Diamond Sports declined to renew its contract.
On September 29, 2023, the Astros and the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association purchased AT&T SportsNet Southwest from Warner Bros.
The new network was a way for Anheuser-Busch to show additional games of the St. Louis Cardinals, the Major League Baseball team it owned at the time.
Today, the Cardinals and Reds are shown on Fox Sports Net in their respective regions, Midwest and Ohio.
However Victory Sports was unable to obtain carriage from the primary cable television providers in the Twin Cities, the rest of the state of Minnesota, and the Dakotas, or from DirecTV or Dish Network.
MSG paid an average of $55 million a year for those rights, and the deal is widely credited as having started a national trend towards greater team coverage on regional sports networks, with more games being broadcast than over-the-air stations' regular programming schedules could usually permit.
Like the Yankee deals, Cablevision also owned the broadcast TV rights, placing games on WWOR-TV before moving to WPIX in 1999.
Root Sports Northwest is the regional carrier of the Seattle Mariners, televising their games in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and parts of Idaho and Montana.
Both Sportsnet and TSN air packages of U.S. games, coming from other regional sports networks and ESPN respectively.
In addition, in the past some Blue Jays games were televised nationally on Canadian over-the-air networks, namely CBC and CTV.
Games televised by WGN Sports or WLS-TV are syndicated by a network of affiliated stations within the team's territory.
This arrangement has not been without controversy due to carriage disputes with other major cable providers leaving many unable to see the games in the Los Angeles area.
From January 1997 to September 2013, Fox Sports Net West 2 (later renamed Fox Sports Prime Ticket, now simply called Prime Ticket) was formed to serve as a cable home for the Clippers, Dodgers, Ducks, and all other events that FSN West didn't have room for.
This is after the December 1993 shut-down of SportsChannel Los Angeles, which left their home teams with only over-the-air and part-time cable coverage locally.
Bill Webb, who directs the World Series and the All-Star Game for Fox, is the director for Mets broadcasts on both SNY and WPIX.
Since at least 1981, Major League Baseball had designated the Baltimore Orioles television territory to extend from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Charlotte, North Carolina.
[7] Major League Baseball and representatives of its regional broadcasters have attempted to negotiate how in-market streaming for U.S. teams would operate, including whether digital rights to regional games would be centralized and held by an exclusive partner, and whether local rightsholders would be able to distribute the telecasts through their own services and apps, or whether all in-market games would have to be offered through existing MLB apps.
[14] Only three teams—the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals (who share MASN as their rightsholder), and the Los Angeles Dodgers, do not offer in-market streaming.
Commissioner Manfred said at a press conference before the 2023 season that he hoped that MLB could make broadcasts available for all teams available via MLB.tv, without local blackouts, in the event that regional sports networks are unable to provide coverage.
[15][16] On March 14, Diamond Sports Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an attempt to restructure its debt.
[19] The president of AT&T SportsNet told The Seattle Times that Root Sports Northwest was unaffected by WBD's announcement, as the Mariners themselves have owned a majority stake in the channel since 2013.
[19] On May 30, MLB announced that it would take over Padres broadcasts starting the following day, after Bally Sports San Diego failed to make payments to the team during a grace period.
[22][23][24] The Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers were initially included as part of MLB's local distribution deal, but both teams decided to remain on the newly-rebranded FanDuel Sports Network for 2025.